FDR, LBJ, Reagan: How Obama is missing the chance to re-align America
Fri Jan 18, 2008 at 11:40:08 AM PDT
DISCLAIMER: This is not a hit diary. Obama is a great, liberal senator. This is a diary about strategy.
I frequently hear that 2008 has the potential to be a re-aligning election. Re-alignment occurs when one party moves towards a policy, and the other party is forced to go in the same direction or face extinction.
For example, the arc from FDR to Johnson represented a wave of change that forced Nixon to follow. Democrats gave us the New Deal and the Great Society. Nixon knew there was no turning back, so he could only slow things down. Nixon continued school integration and gave us the Environmental Protection Agency.
Richard Nixon also offered America this:
The time is at hand this year to bring comprehensive, high quality health care within the reach of every American. I shall propose a sweeping new program that will assure comprehensive health insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it, with vastly improved protection against catastrophic illnesses.
Yes. A republican insuring everybody. You HAVE to read this.
(Go ahead and click.)
So, why don't we have national health insurance? Because there were still passionate advocates on the left for single payer health care.
Despite the heated politics of Watergate, national health-care legislation was proceeding in Congress thanks to a compromise brokered by a young Democratic senator from Massachusetts, Edward Kennedy, a Nixon nemesis.
But then, according to a 1974 political almanac published by Congressional Quarterly, the AFL-CIO and the United Auto Workers lobbied successfully to kill the plan. Unions hoped to get a better deal after the next elections.
The rest was, as they say, history.
In the 1970s, the political climate was this:
Right-Wing: Universal Health Insurance
Left-Wing: Single Payer Health Care
I'll admit that if we compromised then, we'd have had progress. But that's not the lesson.
The lesson is what happened in 1980.
Reagan changed government like napalm changed Vietnam. If you'd rather use a different word, create a linguistics blog. Obama is partially right: Reagan changed America by changing the conventional wisdom about government.
The Reagan campaign looked something like this:
Right-Wing: Dismantle Government
Left-Wing: Grow Government (defined cleverly by our opponents)
The sheer force of Reagan's political-shift shattered the Democratic party into the 1990s. Democrats adopted the Republican position on free trade. Democrats gutted welfare and removed government checks on media consolidation. Democrats allowed media companies to rewrite our copyright laws. The re-alignment was so powerful that Democrats had to follow Republicans to the right:
Right-Wing: Dismantle Government
Left-Wing: Shrink Government
We gave in. Single payer health care was, in a sense, a referendum on "big government". They defined the debate, and we lost.
At least, for the time being. The conventional wisdom of big media is lagging behind... but UHC is coming back into vogue, even among Republicans! It's polls like these that make me believe a re-alignment is possible.
In response, the GOP also plans to reform health care. Mitt Romney. Rudy Giuliani. Fred Thompson. The propose to make health care more affordable by reducing taxes and de-regulating the health market, to create competition over price.
We can fill in one of the blanks for the current 2008 political alignment:
Right-Wing: Affordable Health Insurance
Left-Wing: ?????????????????
The good news is all our Democrats support single payer health care in principle, or have at one point. The problem is that one Democratic candidate has been troubling progressives such as myself.
"the reason people don’t have health insurance isn’t because they don’t want it, it’s because they can’t afford it," ...
"Their essential argument," he says, "is the only way to get everybody covered is if the government forces you to buy health insurance. If you don’t buy it, then you’ll be penalized in some way."
Let's nominate Obama in 2008, and fill in the blank:
Right-Wing: Affordable Health Insurance -- through competition and tax breaks
Left-Wing: Affordable Health Insurance -- through cost controls and standards
That's a pretty crappy re-alignment. Re-alignment occurs when you carry the flag in one direction, win the war, and force your opponent to follow. If we win this battle, I can't imagine Republicans making any major shift.
If Obama wants to bring about a progressive re-alignment, then he's learned the wrong lessons:
Obama simply misunderstands how Reagan achieved that transformational change - to the detriment of the country I must add - he ran a partisan, ideological divisive campaign that excoriated Democratic values and trumpeted GOP values. He also race baited.
Obama is running a post-partisan, nonideological campaign that is bereft of defenses of Democratic values and ideas. He is running an anti-Reagan campaign. His argument is simply ahistorical. It is precisely BECAUSE he refuses to try and make this a transformational campaign, a campaign to fight for Dem values, to persuade the country that the Dems are right, that his campaign is a promise unfulfilled.
In short, Obama STILL does not get it.
This is not an Obama hit diary. Obama is one of our best, liberal senators. He has a great voting record. He supports single payer health care in principle. But if he's trying to learn how to be the "progressive Reagan", he's learned the wrong lessons.
Reagan campaigned as a conservative, and threw liberals under the bus:
"I've never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a 'fat cat' and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a 'public-spirited philanthropist'."" - Ronald Reagan
"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." - Ronald Reagan
"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth."" - Ronald Reagan
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan
"Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15." - Ronald Reagan
"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." - Ronald Reagan
Compare that to Obama's big quote, that gets repeated over and over, and echoes throughout his campaign.
"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America." - Barack Obama, DNC 2004
I want to set the record straight about mandates.
Here's the lesson that every game-changing President has understood. FDR, Lincoln, and (sadly) Reagan:
Politics is not a battle for the middle. It is a battle for defining the terms of the political debate. It is a battle to be able to say what is the middle.
The lesson is simple: you define the center by defining the extremes.
For Reagan, any new government program is destructive. Domestic spending was extreme. That made conservative small government into the new center. Even Clinton had to follow.
For Obama, partisanship is destructive. He hasn't defined the political center by pointing to his voting record (except maybe on one specific war, thank God). The Obama mandate is not an end to conservatism. The Obama mandate is that both Republicans and Democrats must give a few inches.
I think Obama can make incremental progress on issues like health care. But that's not political re-alignment. Obama doesn't repudiate conservatism the way that Reagan smacked down the liberal boogiemen.
I'm suggesting that Obama needs to develop his mandate. Soon. And if Obama won't do it, then all of us must do it as his supporters.
Obama has a great mandate so far: unify the country and increase government transparency. But it's missing a progressive ingredient. That ingredient is up to him.
He could use Reagan-esque quips to redefine the center, like "a conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward."
He could mention "path to single payer health care" even half as often as he mentions unity, or change.
But whatever he decides to do, he must understand that this country cannot be re-aligned without smacking down a conservative idea or two. It's not enough to just smack around incompetence.
We want a progressive re-alignment. I'm saying that Obama needs to amend, not change, his strategy to get us there.
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